TheAnthologia Latina, compiled at Carthage in the sixth century, opens with seventy-three epigrams, of which three are attributed by the MSS. to Seneca (Poet. Lat. Min.1-3, Baehrens). The first is entitledde qualitate temporisand descants on the ultimate destruction of the world by fire—a well-known Stoical doctrine. The second and third are fierce denunciations of Corsica, his place of exile. The rest are nameless. But there are several which can only be attributed to Seneca. The ninth is entitledde se ad patriam, and is addressed to Cordova by one plunged in deep misfortune—a clear reference to his banishment in Corsica. The fifty-first is a prayer that the author's two brothers may be happier than himself, and that 'the little Marcus may rival his uncles in eloquence'. The brothers are described one as older, the other as younger than the author. It is an obvious inference that the brothers referred to are Gallio and Mela, while it is possible that the little Marcus is no other than the gifted son of Mela, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, the epic poet.[157] The fifteenth represents him as an exile in a barren land: he appeals to a faithful friend named Crispus, probably the distinguished orator Passienus Crispus, the younger, who was consul for the second time in 44 A.D.[158] There are also other epigrams which, though less explicit, suit the circumstances of Seneca's exile. The fifth is written in praise of the quiet life. The author has two brothers (l. 14), and at the opening of the poem cries, 'let others seek the praetorship!' In this connexion it is noteworthy that at the time of his banishment Seneca had held no higher office than the quaestorship. The seventeenth and eighteenth are on the same subject, and contain a solemn warning againstregum amicitiae, appropriate enough in the mouth of the victim of a court intrigue. Epigrams 29-36 are devoted to the praises of Claudius for his conquest of Britain. Claudius had banished him and was a suitable subject for flattery. For the rest the poems are largely of the republican character so fashionable in Stoic circles during the first century of the empire. There are many epigrams on Cato [159] and the Pompeys. Others, again, are of a rhetorical nature, dealing with scholastic themes;[160] others of an erotic and even scandalous character. We can claim no certainty for the view that all these poems are by Seneca, but there is a general resemblance of style throughout, and probability points to the whole collection being by the same author. The fact that the same theme is treated more than once scarcely stands in the way. We cannot dictate the amusements of a weary exile. It would be rash even to deny the possibility of his being the author of the erotic poems.[161] Philosopher as he was, he had been banished on a charge of adultery: without in any way admitting the truth of that accusation, we may readily believe that he stooped to one of the fashionable amusements of the day, the composition of pointed and unsavoury verse; for the standard of morality in writing was far lower than the standard of morals in actual life.[162]
The poems repay reading, but call for little comment. They lack originality. The thought is thin, the expression neat, though scarcely as pointed as we might expect from such an author, while the metre is graceful: the treatment of the elegiac is freer than that of Ovid, but pleasing and melodious. At times powerful lines flash out.
qua frigida semper praefulget stellis Arctos inocciduis (xxxvi. 6)
Where the cold constellation of the heaven gleamsever with unsetting stars.
shines out from the midst of banal flattery of the emperor with astonishing splendour. The poemde qualitate temporis(4) closes with four fine lines with the unmistakable Senecan ring about them—
quid tam parva loquor? moles pulcerrima caeliardebit flammis tota repente suis.omnia mors poscit. lex est, non poena, perire:hic aliquo mundus tempore nullus erit.
Why speak of things so small? The glorious vault of heaven one day shall blaze with sudden self-kindled flame. Death calls for all creation. 'Tis a law, not a penalty to perish. The universe itself shall one day be as though it had never been.
Cato (9) deliberates on suicide with characteristic rhetoric, artificial in the extreme, but not devoid of dignity—
estne aliquid, quod Cato non potuit?dextera, me vitas? durum est iugulasse Catonem?sed, quia liber erit, iam puto, non dubitas.fas non est vivum cuiquam servire Catonem:quinctiam vivit nunc Cato, si moritur.[2]
Is there then that which Cato had not the heart to do?Right-hand, dost thou shrink from me? Is it hard to slayCato? Nay, methinks thou dost hesitate no more, for thoushalt set Cato free. 'Tis a crime that Cato should liveto be any man's slave; nay, Cato truly lives if Cato die.
Cleverest of all is the treatment of the rhetorical theme of the two brothers who meet in battle in the civil war (72). The one unwittingly slays the other, strips the slain, and discovers what he has done—
quod fuerat virtus, factum est scelus. haeret in hostemiles et e manibus mittere tela timet.inde ferox: 'quid, lenta manus, nunc denique cessas?iustius hoste tibi qui moriatur adest.fraternam res nulla potest defendere caedem;mors tua sola potest: morte luenda tua est,scilicet ad patrios referes spolia ampla penates?ad patrem victor non potes ire tuum.sed potes ad fratrem: nunc fortiter utere telo!impius hoc telo es, hoc potes esse pius.vivere si poteris, potuisti occidere fratrem!nescisti: sed scis: haec mora culpa tua est.viximus adversis, iaccamus partibus isdem(dixit et in dubio est utrius ense cadat).ense meo moriar, maculato morte nefanda?cui moreris, ferrum quo moriare dabit.'dixit et in fratrem fraterno concidit ense:victorem et victum condidit una manus.[163]
What had been valour now is made a crime. The soldierhalts by his foe and fears to launch his shafts. Thenhis courage rekindled. 'What! coward hand, dost thoudelaynow? There is one here whom thou shouldst slaysooner than the foe. Naught can assoil of the guilt ofa brother's blood save only death; 'tis thy death mustatone. Shalt thou bear home to thy father's halls richspoil of war? Nay, victor thus, thou canst not go to meetthy sire. But victor thou canst go to meet thy brother;nowuse thy weapon bravely. This weapon stained thee withcrime, 'tis this weapon shall make thee clean. If thou hastheart to live, thou hadst the heart to slay thy brother;thouhadstno such murderous thought, butnowthou hast;this thy tarrying brings thee guilt. We have lived foes, letus lie united in the peace of the grave.' He ceased anddoubted on whose sword to fall.' Shall I die by mine ownsword, thus foul with shameful murder. He for whom thou diestshall give thee the steel wherewith to die.' He ceased, andfell dead upon his brother, slain by his brother's sword.The same hand slew both victor and vanquished.
This is not poetry of the first class, if indeed it is poetry at all. But it is trick-rhetoric of the most brilliant kind without degenerating into bombastic absurdity. There is, in fact, a restraint in these epigrams which provides a remarkable contrast with the turgid extravagance that defaces so much of the dramas. This is in part due to the difference of the moulds into which the rhetoric is run, but it is hard to resist the belief that the epigrams—written mainly during the exile in Corsica—are considerably later than the plays. They are in themselves insignificant; they show no advance in dexterity upon the dramas, but they do show a distinct increase of maturity.
The plays are ten in number; they comprise aHercules Furens, Troades, Phoenissae(orThebais),Medea, Phaedra(orHippolytus),Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules Oetaeus, and—sole example of thefabula praetexta—theOctavia. Despite the curious silence of Seneca himself and of his contemporaries, there can be little doubt as to the general correctness of the attribution which assigns to Seneca the only Latin tragedies that grudging time has spared us. TheMedea, Hercules Furens, Troades, Phaedra, Agamemnon, andThyestesare all cited by late writers, while Quintilian[164] himself cites a line from the Medea as the work of Seneca. The name Seneca, without any further specification, points as clearly to Seneca, the philosopher, as the name Cicero to the great orator. The absence of any further or more explicit reference on the part of Quintilian to Seneca's achievements as a tragedian is easily explained on the supposition that the critic regarded them as but an insignificant portion of his work. Yet stronger confirmation is afforded by the internal evidence. The verse is marked by the same brilliant but fatiguing terseness, the same polish and point, the same sententiousness, the same succession of short stabbing sentences, that mark the prose works of Seneca.[165] More remarkable still is the close parallelism of thought. The plays are permeated through and through with Stoicism, and the expression given to certain Stoical doctrines is often almost identical with passages from the philosophical works.[166] Against these evidences the silence of Seneca himself counts for little. We may charitably suppose that he rated his plays at their just value. In any case a poet is under no compulsion to quote his own verses, or even to refer to them, in works of a totally different nature.[167]
A more serious question is whether Seneca is the author of all the plays transmitted to us under his name. The authenticity of four of these dramas has been seriously questioned. That theOctaviais by a later hand may be regarded as certain. Seneca could hardly have dared to write a play on so dangerous a theme—the brutal treatment by Nero of his young wife Octavia. Moreover, Seneca himself is one of the dramatis personae, and there are clear references to the death of Nero, while the style is simple and restrained, and wholly unlike that of the other plays. It is the work of a saner and less flamboyant age.[168] TheAgamemnonand theOedipushave been suspected on the ground that certain of the lyric portions are written in a curious patchwork metre of a character fortunately unique in Latin lyric verse. TheAgamemnonfurther has two choruses.[169] But in all other respects the language, technique, and metre closely resemble the other dramas. Neither objection need carry any weight. There is no reason why Seneca should not have introduced a double chorus or have indulged in unsuccessful metrical experiments.[170] Far more difficult is the problem presented by theHercules Oetaeus. It presents many anomalies, of which the least are a double chorus and a change of scene from Oechalia to Trachis. Imitations and plagiarisms from the other plays abound, and the work has more than its fair share of vain repetitions and tasteless absurdities. On the other hand, metre and diction closely recall the dramas accepted as genuine. It is hard to give any certain answer to such a complicated problem, but it is noteworthy that all the worst defects in this play (which among its other peculiarities possesses abnormal length) occur after l. 705, while the earlier scenes depicting the jealousy of Deianira show the Senecan dramatic style almost at its best. Even in the later portion of the play there is much that may be by the hand of Seneca. It is impossible to brand the drama as wholly spurious. The opening lines (1-232) may not belong to the play, but may form an entirely separate scene dealing with the capture of Oechalia: there is no reason to suppose that they are not by Seneca, and the same statement applies to the great bulk of ll. 233-705. The remainder has in all probability suffered largely from interpolation, but its general resemblance to Seneca in style and diction is too strongly marked to permit us to reject iten bloc. The problem is too obscure to repay detailed discussion.[171] The most probable solution of the question would seem to be that the work was left in an unfinished condition with inconsistencies, self-plagiarisms, repetitions, and absurdities which revision would have removed; this unfinished drama was then worked over and corrected by a stupid, but careful student of Seneca.
There is such a complete absence of evidence as to the period of Seneca's life during which these dramas were composed, that much ingenuity has been wasted in attempts to solve the problem. The view most widely held—why it should be held is a mystery—is that they were composed during Seneca's exile in Corsica (41-9 A.D.).[172] Others, again, hold that they were written for the delectation of the young Nero, who had early betrayed a taste for the stage. This view has nothing to support it save the accusation mentioned by Tacitus,[173] to the effect that the patronage and approval of Nero led Seneca to write verse more frequently than his wont. Direct evidence there is none, but the general crudity of the work, coupled with the pedantic hardness and rigidity of the Stoicism which pervades the plays, points strongly to an early date, considerably earlier than the exile in Corsica. There is no trace of the mature experience and feeling for humanity that characterize the later philosophical works. On the contrary, these plays are just what might be expected of a young man fresh from the schools of rhetoric and philosophy.[174] As to the order in which the plays were written there is practically nothing to guide us.[175] TheHercules Oetaeusis probably the latest, for in it we find plagiarisms from theHercules Furens, Oedipus, Thyestes, Phoenissae, Phaedra, andTroades. Even here, however, there is an element of uncertainty, for it is impossible to ascertain whether any given plagiarism is due to Seneca or to his interpolators.
Leaving such barren and unprofitable ground, what can we say of the plays themselves? Even after making due allowance for the hopeless decline of dramatic taste and for the ruin wrought by the schools of rhetoric, it is hard to speak with patience of such productions, when we recall the brilliance and charm of the prose works of Seneca. We can forgive him being rhetorical when he speaks for himself; when he speaks through the lips of others he is less easily tolerable.
Drama is a reading of human life: if it is to hold one's interest it must deal with the feelings, thought, and action of genuine human beings and represent their complex interaction: the characters must be real and must differ one from the other, so that by force of contrast and by the continued play of diverse aspects and developments of the human soul, the significance, the pathos, and the power of the fragment of human life selected for representation may be fully brought out and set before our eyes. If these characteristics be absent, the drama must of necessity be an artistic failure by reason of its lack of truth. But it requires also plot, with a logical growth leading to some great climax and developing a growing suspense in the spectator as to what shall be the end. It is true that plot without reality may give us a successful melodrama, that truth of character-drawing with a minimum of plot may move and interest us. But in neither case shall we have drama in its truest and noblest form.
Seneca gives us neither the half nor the whole. The stage is ultimately the touchstone of dramatic excellence. But if it is to be such a touchstone, it must have an audience with a penetration of intelligence and a soundness of taste such as had long ceased to characterize Roman audiences. The Senecan drama has lost touch with the stage and lacks both unity and life. Such superficial unity as his plots possess is due to the fact that they are ultimately imitations of Greek[176] drama. A full discussion of the plots is neither necessary here nor possible. A few instances of Seneca's treatment of his material must suffice.[177] He has no sense of logical development; the lack of sequence and of proportion traceable in the letters is more painfully evident in the tragedies.
TheHercules Furenssupplies an excellent example of the weakness of the Senecan plot. It is based on the [Greek: H_erakl_es mainomenos] of Euripides, and such unity as it possesses is in the main due to that fact. It is in his chief divergences from the Euripidean treatment of the story that his deficiencies become most apparent. Theseus appears early in the play merely that he may deliver a long rhodomontade on the appearance of the underworld, whence Hercules has rescued him; and, worst of all, the return of Hercules is rendered wholly ineffective. Amphitryon hears the approaching steps of Hercules as he bursts his way to the upper world and cries (523)—
est est sonitus Herculei gradus.
The chorus then, as if they had heard nothing, deliver themselves of a chant that describes Hercules as still a prisoner in Hades. When Hercules at last is allowed to appear, he appears alone, and delivers a long ranting glorification of himself (592-617) before he is joined by his father, wife, and children. As Leo has remarked,[178] this episode has been tastelessly torn into two fragments merely to give Hercules an opportunity for turgid declamation.
TheMedea, again, is, on the whole, Euripidean in form, though it probably owes much to the influence of Ovid.[179] It is, moreover, the least tasteless and best constructed of his tragedies. It loses comparatively little by the omission of the Aegeus episode, but suffers terribly by the insertion of a bombastic description of Medea's incantations. The love of the Silver Age for rhetoric has converted Medea into a skilful rhetorician, its love for the black art has degraded her to a vulgar sorceress. Nothing, again, can be cruder or more awkward than the manner in which the news of the death of Creon and his daughter is announced. After an interval so brief as scarcely to suffice even for the conveyance of the poisoned gifts to the palace, in rushes a messenger crying (879)—
periere cuncta, concidit regni status. nata atque genitor cinere permixto iacent.
Cho. qua fraude capti?Nunt. qua solent reges capi, donis.
Cho. in illis esse quis potuit dolus?
Nunt. et ipse miror vixque iam facto malo potuisse fieri credo; quis cladis modus? avidus per omnem regiae partem furit ut iussus ignis: iam domus tota occidit, urbi timetur.
Cho. unda flammas opprimat.
Nunt. et hoc in ista clade mirandum accidit, alit unda flammas, quoque prohibetur magis, magis ardet ignis: ipsa praesidia occupat.
All is lost! the kingdom's fallen! Father and daughter lie in mingled dust!
Ch. By what snare taken?
Mess. By gifts, the snare of kings.
Ch. What harm could lurk in them?
Mess. Myself I marvel, and scarce though the deed is done can I believe it possible. How died they? Devouring flames rage through all the palace as at her command. Now the whole house is fallen and men fear for the city.
Ch. Let water quench the flames.
Mess. Nay, in this overthrow is this added wonder. Water feeds the flames and opposition makes the fire burn fiercer. It hath seared even that which should have stayed its power.
That is all: if we had not read Euripides we should scarcely understand the connexion between the gifts and the mysterious fire. Seneca, with the lack of proportion displayed in nearly all his dramas, has spent so much time in describing the wholly irrelevant and absurd details of Medea's incantations that he finds no room to give what might be a really dramatic description of the all-important catastrophe in which Medea's vengeance finds issue. There is hardly a play which will not provide similar instances of the lack of genuine constructive power. In theOedipuswe get the same long narrative of horror that has disfigured theHercules Furensand theMedea. Creon describes to us the dark rites of incantation used to evoke the shade of Laius.[180] In thePhaedrawe find what at first would seem to be a clever piece of stagecraft. Hippolytus, scandalized at Phaedra's avowal of her incestuous passion, seizes her by the hair and draws his sword as though to slay her. He changes his purpose, but the nurse has seen him and calls for aid, denouncing Hippolytus' violence and clearly intending to make use of it as damning evidence against him. But the chorus refuse to credit her, and the incident falls flat.[181] Everywhere there is the same casual workmanship. If we stop short of denying to Seneca the possession of any dramatic talent, it is at any rate hard to resist the conviction that he treated the plays as aparergon, spending little thought or care on theirensemble, though at times working up a scene or scenes with an elaboration and skill as unmistakable as it is often misdirected.
The plays are, in fact, as Nisard has admirably put it,drames de recette. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients—description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, for all their cleverness, Seneca's description and declamation are radically bad. It is but rarely that he shows himself capable of simple and natural language. If a tragic event enacted off the stage requires description, it must outdo all other descriptions of the same type. And seeing that one of the chief uses of narrative in tragedy is to present to the imagination of the audience events which are too horrible for their eyes, the result in Seneca's hands is often little less than revolting. For example, the self-blinding of Oedipus is set forth with every detail of horror, possible and impossible, till the imagination sickens.
(961) gemuit et dirum fremens manus in ora torsit, at contra truces oculi steterunt et suam intenti manum ultro insequuntur, vulneri occurrunt suo. scrutatur avidus manibus uncis lumina, radice ab ima funditus vulsos simul evolvit orbes; haeret in vacuo manus et fixa penitus unguibus lacerat cavos alte recessus luminum et inanes sinus saevitque frustra plusque quam satis est furit.
The last line is an epitome of Seneca's methods of description. Yet more revolting is the speech of the messenger describing the banquet, at which Atreus placed the flesh of Thyestes' murdered sons before their father (623-788). Nothing is spared us, much that is impossible is added.[182] At times, moreover, this love of horrors leads to the introduction of descriptions wholly alien to the play. In theHercules Furensthe time during which Hercules is absent from the scene, engaged in the slaying of the tyrant Lycus, is filled by a description of Hades from the mouth of Theseus, who is fresh-come from the underworld. The speech is not peculiarly bad in itself; it is only very long[183] (658-829) and very irrelevant.
The effect of the declamation is not less unhappy. Seneca's dramatis personae rarely speak like reasoning human beings: they rant at one another or at the audience with such overwrought subtleties of speech and rhetorical perversions that they give the impression of being no more than mechanical puppets handled by a crafty but inartistic showman. All speak the same strange language, a language born in the rhetorical schools of Greece and Rome. Gods and mortals alike suffer the same melancholy fate. Juno, when she declares her resolve to afflict Hercules with madness, addresses the furies who are to be her ministers as follows (H.F.105):
concutite pectus, acrior mentem excoquat quam qui caminis ignis Aetnaeis furit: ut possit animo captus Alcides agi magno furore percitus, nobis prius insaniendum est—Iuno, cur nondum furis? me me, sorores, mente deiectam mea versate primam, facere si quicquam apparo dignum noverca; vota mutentur mea: natos reversus videat incolumes precor manuque fortis redeat: inveni diem invisa quo nos Herculis virtus iuvet. me vicit et se vincat et cupiat mori ab inferis reversus…. pugnanti Herculi tandem favebo.
Distract his heart with madness: let his soulMore fiercely burn than that hot fire which glowsOn Aetna's forge. But first, that HerculesMay be to madness driven, smitten throughWith mighty passion, I must be insane.Why rav'st thou not, O Juno? Me, oh, me,Ye sisters, first of sanity deprive,That something worthy of a stepdame's wrathI may prepare. Let all my hate be changeTo favour. Now I pray that he may comeTo earth again, and see his sons unharmed;May he return with all his old time strength.Now have I found a day when HerculesMay help me with his strength that I deplore.Now let him equally o'ercome himselfAnd me; and let him, late escaped from death,Desire to die… And so at last I'll helpAlcides in his wars. MILLER.
She is clearly a near relative of that Oedipus who, in thePhoenissae, begs Antigone to lead him to the rock where the Sphinx sat of old (120):
dirige huc gressus pedum, hic siste patrem. dira ne sedes vacet. monstrum repone maius. hoc saxum insidens obscura nostrae verba fortunae loquar, quae nemo solvat. … saeva Thebarum lues luctifica caecis verba committens modis quid simile posuit? quid tam inextricabile? avi gener patrisque rivalis sui frater suorum liberum et fratrum parens; uno avia partu liberos. peperit viro, sibi et nepotes. monstra quis tanta explicat? ego ipse, victae spolia qui Sphingis tuli, haerebo fati tardus interpres mei.
Direct me thither, set thy father there.Let not that dreadful seat be empty long,But place me there a greater monster still.There will I sit and of my fate proposeA riddle dark that no man shall resolve.* * * * *What riddle like to this could she propose,That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive wordsIn puzzling measures? What so dark as this?He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yetHis father's rival; brother of his sons,And father of his brothers: at one birthThe grandame bore unto her husband sons,And grandsons to herself. Who can unwindA tangle such as this? E'en I myself,Who bore the spoils of triumph o'er the Sphinx,Stand mute before the riddle of my fate.MILLER.
There is no need to multiply instances; each play will supply many. Only in theTroades[184] and thePhaedradoes this declamatory rhetoric rise to something higher than mere declamation and near akin to true poetry. In these plays there are two speeches standing on a different plane to anything else in Seneca's iambics. In theTroadesAgamemnon is protesting against the proposed sacrifice of Polyxena to the spirit of the dead Achilles (255).
quid caede dira nobiles clari ducis aspergis umbras? noscere hoc primum decet, quid facere victor debeat, victus pati. violenta nemo imperia continuit diu, moderata durant; … magna momento obrui vincendo didici. Troia nos tumidos facit nimium ac feroces? stamus hoc Danai loco, unde illa cecidit. fateor, aliquando impotens regno ac superbus altius memet tuli; sed fregit illos spiritus haec quae dare potuisset aliis causa, Fortunae favor. tu me superbum, Priame, tu timidum facis. ego esse quicquam sceptra nisi vano putem fulgore tectum nomen et falso comam vinclo decentem? casus haec rapiet brevis, nec mille forsan ratibus aut annis decem. … fatebor … affligi Phrygas vincique volui; ruere et aequari solo utinam arcuissem.
Why besmirch with murder foul the noble shade of that renowned chief? First must thou learn the bounds of a victor's power, of the vanquished's suffering. No man for long has held unbridled sway; only self-control may endure … I myself have conquered and have learned thereby that man's mightiness may fall in the twinkling of an eye. Shall Troy o'erthrown exalt our pride and make us overbold? Here we the Danaans stand on the spot whence she has fallen. Of old, I own, I have borne myself too haughtily, self-willed and proud of my power. But Fortune's favour, which had made another proud, has broken my pride. Priam, thou makest me proud, thou makest me tremble. I count the sceptre naught save a glory bright with worthless tinsel that sets the vain splendour of a crown upon my brow. All this the chance of one short hour may take from me without the aid of a thousand ships and ten long years of siege … I will own my fault … I desired to crush and conquer Troy. Would I had forbidden to lay her low and raze her walls to the ground!
The thought is not deep: the speech might serve for a model for asuasoriain the schools of rhetoric. But there is a stateliness and dignity about it that is most rare in these plays. At last after dreary tracts of empty rant we meet Seneca, the spiritual guide of the epistles and the treatises.
Far more striking, however, from the dramatic standpoint, are the great speeches in thePhaedra, where the heroine makes known her passion for Hippolytus (600 sqq.). They are frankly rhetorical, but direct, passionate, and to the point. They contain few striking lines or sentiments, but they are clear and comparatively free from affectation. Theseus has maddened Phaedra by his infidelities, and has long been absent from her, imprisoned in the underworld. An uncontrollable passion for her stepson has come upon her. She appeals to the unsuspecting Hippolytus for pity and protection (619):
muliebre non est regna tutari urbium; tu qui iuventae flore primaevo viges cives paterno fortis imperio rege, sinu receptam supplicem ac servam tege. miserere viduae.
Hipp. Summus hoc omen deus avertat. aderit sospes actutum parens.
'Tis no woman's task to rule cities. Do thou, strong in the flower of thy first youth, flinch not, but govern the state by the power thy father held. Take me and shield me in thy bosom, thy suppliant and thy slave! Pity thy father's widow.
Hipp. Nay, high heaven avert the omen. Soon shall my father return unscathed.
Phaedra then begins to show her true colours. 'Nay!' she replies, 'he will not come. Pluto holds him fast, the would-be ravisher of his bride, unless indeed Pluto, like others I wot of, is indifferent to love.' Hippolytus attempts to console her: he will do all in his power to make life easy for her:
et te merebor esse ne viduam putes ac tibi parentis ipse supplebo locum.
I shall prove me worthy of thee: so thou shalt not deemthyself a widow. I will fill up my absent father's room.
These innocent words are as fuel to Phaedra's passion. She turns to him again appealing for pity, pity for an ill she dare not name—
quod in novercam cadere vix credas malum.
He bids her speak out. She replies, 'Love consumes me with an all-devouring flame. 'He still fails to catch her meaning, supposing that the passion of which she speaks is for the absent Theseus. She can restrain herself no longer: 'Aye, 'tis for Theseus!' she cries (646):
Hippolyte, sic est; Thesei vultus amo [185] illos priores quos tulit quondam puer, cum prima puras barba signaret genas monstrique caecam Cnosii vidit domum et longa curva fila collegit via. quis tum ille fulsit! presserant vittae comam et ora flavus tenera tinguebat pudor; inerant lacertis mollibus fortes tori; tuaeque Phoebes vultus aut Phoebi mei, tuusque potius—talis, en talis fuit cum placuit hosti, sic tulit celsum caput: in te magis refulget incomptus decor; est genitor in te totus et torvae tamen pars aliqua matris miscet ex aequo decus; in ore Graio Scythicus apparet rigor. si cum parente Creticum intrasses fretum, tibi fila potius nostra nevisset soror. te te, soror, quacumque siderei poli in parte fulges, invoco ad causam parem: domus sorores una corripuit duas, te genitor, at me natus. en supplex iacet adlapsa genibus regiae proles domus, respersa nulla labe et intacta, innocens tibi mutor uni. certa descendi ad preces: finem hic dolori faciet aut vitae dies, miserere amantis.[186]
Even so, Hippolytus; I love the face that Theseus wore, in the days of old while yet he was a boy, when the first down marked his bright cheeks and he looked on the dark home of the Cretan monster and gathered the long magic thread along the winding way. Ah! how then he shone upon my eyes. A wreath was about his hair and his delicate cheeks glowed with the golden bloom of modesty. Strong sinews stood out upon his shapely arms and his countenance was the countenance of the goddess that thou servest or of mine own bright sun-god; nay, rather 'twas as thine own. Even so, even so looked he when he won the heart of her that was his foe, and lofty was his carriage like to thine. But in thee still brighter shines an artless glory, and on thee is all thy father's beauty. Yet mingled therewith in equal portion is something of thy wild mother's fairness. On thy Greek face is seen the fierceness of the Scythian. Hadst thou sailed o'er the sea with thy sire to Crete, for thee rather had my sister spun the magic thread. On thee, on thee, my sister, I call where'er thou shinest in the starry heaven, on thee I call to aid my cause. Lo! sisters twain hath one house brought to naught—thee did the father ruin, me the son. Lo! suppliant at thy knees I fall, the daughter of a king, stainless and pure and innocent. For thee alone I swerve from my course. I have steeled my soul and stooped to beg of thee. Today shall end either my sorrow or my life. Pity, have pity, on her that loves thee.
Then the storm of Hippolytus' anger breaks. Here at least Seneca has used his great rhetorical gifts to good effect. The passion may be highly artificial when compared with the passion of the genuinely human Phaedra of Euripides, but it is nevertheless passion and not bombast: crudity there may be, but there is no real irrelevance.
There is less to praise and more to wonder at in Seneca's dialogue. Instead of rational conversation or controversy, he gives us a brilliant but meretricious display of epigram, the mechanical nature of which is often emphasized by a curious symmetry of structure. For line after line one character takes up the words of another and turns them against him with dexterity as extraordinary as it is monotonous. The resulting artificiality is almost incredible. It appears in its most extravagant form in theThyestes.[187] Scarcely less strained, though from the nature of the subject the extravagance is less repellent, is a passage in theTroades. Achilles' ghost has demanded the sacrifice of Polyxena. Agamemnon hesitates to give orders for the sacrifice. Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, enumerates the great deeds of his father, and asks, indignantly, if such glory is to win naught save neglect after death. Agamemnon has sacrificed his own daughter, why should he not sacrifice Priam's? Agamemnon—in the speech quoted above—refuses indignantly. 'Sacrifice oxen if you will: no human blood shall be shed!' Pyrrhus replies (306):
hac dextra Achilli victimam reddam suam. quam si negas retinesque, maiorem dabo dignamque quam det Pyrrhus; et nimium diu a caede nostra regia cessat manus paremque poscit Priamus.
Agam. haud equidem nego hoc esse Pyrrhi maximum in bello decus, saevo peremptus ense quod Priamus iacet, _supplex paternus.
Pyrrh.supplicesnostripatrishostesque eosdem novimus. Priamus tamen praesens rogavit; tu gravi pavidus metu, nec ad rogandum fortis Aiaci preces Ithacoque mandas clausus atque hostem tremens.
By this right hand he shall receive his own.And if thou dost refuse and keep the maid,A greater victim will I slay, and oneMore worthy Pyrrhus' gift: for all too longFrom royal slaughter hath my hand been free,And Priam asks an equal sacrifice.
Agam. Far be it from my wish to dim the praiseThat thou dost claim for this most glorious deed—Old Priam slain by thy barbaric sword,Thy father's suppliant.
Pyrrh. I know full wellMy father's suppliants—and well I knowHis enemies. Yet royal Priam cameAnd made his plea before my father's face;But thou, o'ercome with fear, not brave enoughThyself to make request, within thy tentDid trembling hide, and thy desires consignTo braver men, that they might plead for thee.MILLER.
Agamemnon retorts, 'What of your father, when he shirked the toils of war and lay idly in his tent?'—
levi canoram verberans plectro chelyn.
Pyrrh. tunc magnus Hector, arma contemnens tua, cantus Achillis timuit et tanto in metunavalibus pax alta Thessalicis fuit.
Agam. nempe isdem inistis Thessalis navalibus pax altarursus Hectoris patrifuit.
Pyrrh. estregisaltispiritumregi dare.
Agam. cur dextraregi spiritumeripuit tua?
Pyrrh. mortemmisericorssaepe pro vita dabit.
Agam. et nuncmisericorsvirginem busto petis?
Pyrrh. iamne immolari virgines credis nefas?
Agam. praeferre patriam liberis regem decet.
Pyrrh.lexnulla capto parcit aut poenam impedit.
Agam. quod non vetatlex, hoc vetat fieri pudor.
Pyrrh. quodcumquelibuitfacere victorilicet.
Agam. minimum decetliberecui multumlicet.
Idly strumming on his tuneful lyre.
Pyrrh. Then mighty Hector, scornful of thy arms, Yet felt such wholesome fear of that same lyre, That ourThessalian shipswere left inpeace.
Agam. An equalpeacedid Hector's father find, When he betook him to Achilles'ships.
Pyrrh. 'Tis regal thus to spare akingly life.
Agam. Why then didst thou akingly lifedespoil?
Pyrrh. Butmercyoft doth offer death for life.
Agam. Dothmercynow demand a maiden's blood?
Pyrrh. Canst thou proclaim such sacrifice a sin?
Agam. A king must love his country more than child.
Pyrrh. Nolawthe wretched captive's life doth spare.
Agam. Whatlawforbids not, yet may shame forbid.
Pyrrh. 'Tis victor's right to do whate'er hewill.
Agam. Then should hewillthe least, who most can do. MILLER.
The cleverness of this is undeniable: individual lines (e.g. the last) are striking. Taken collectively they are ineffective; we feel, moreover, that the cleverness is mere knack: the continued picking up of the adversary's words to be used as weapons against himself is wearisome. It would be nearly as great a strain to listen to such a dialogue as to take part in it: the atmosphere is that of the school of rhetoric, an atmosphere in which sensible and natural dialogue is impossible.[188]
The characters naturally suffer from this continued display of declamatory rhetoric. They have but one voice and language; they differ from one another only in their clothes and the situations in which they are placed. It is true that some of them are patterns of virtue and others monsters of iniquity. But strip off the coating of paint, and within the limits of these two types—for there are but two—the puppets are precisely the same. There is none of the play of light and shade so essential to drama: all is agonizingly crude and lurid. This is not due to the rhetoric alone, there is another influence at work. The plays are permeated by a strong vein of Stoicism. Carried to its logical conclusion Stoicism lays itself open to taunts such as Cicero levels at his friend Cato in thepro Murena,[189] where he delivers a humorousreductio ad absurdumof its tenets. Such a philosophy is fatal to the drama. It allows no room for human sentiment or human weakness; the most virtuous affections are chilled and robbed of their attractiveness: there are no gradations of temperament, intellect, or character: pathos disappears. The Stoic ideal was a being in whom the natural impulses and desires should be completely subjected to the laws of pure reason. It tends in its intensity to a narrowness, an abstract unreality which is unfavourable to the development of the more human virtues. What it gave with one hand the more rigid Stoic philosophy took away with the other. It preached the brotherhood of man and took away half the value of sympathy. And here in the plays there is nothing of themitis sapientia, the concessions to mortal weakness, the humanity, which characterize the prose works of Seneca and have won the hearts of many generations of men. There the hardness of Stoicism is softened by ripe experience and a tendency to eclecticism, and the doctrinaire stands less sharply revealed. 'Sous l'austérité du philosophe, on trouve un homme.' The most noteworthy result of this hard Stoicism upon the plays is the almost complete absence of pathos springing from the tenderer human affections. Seneca's tragedy may sometimes succeed in horrifying us, as in the ghastly rhetoric of theThyestesor theMedea. He moves us rarely.
But there are a few striking exceptions to the rule, notably the beautiful passage of theTroades, where Andromache bids her companions in misfortune cease from useless lamentation[190] (409):
quid, maesta Phrygiae turba, laceratis comas miserumque tunsae pectus effuso genas fletu rigatis? levia perpessae sumus, si flenda patimur. Ilium vobis modo, mihi cecidit olim, cum ferus curru incito mea membra raperet et gravi gemeret sono Peliacis axis pondere Hectoreo tremens. tunc obruta atque eversa quodcumque accidit torpens malis rigeusque sine sensu fero. iam erepta Danais coniugem sequerer meum, nisi hic teneret: hic meos animos domat morique prohibet; cogit hic aliquid deos adhuc rogare—tempus aerumnae addidit.
Why, ye sad Phrygian women, do ye rend your hair and beat your woeful breasts and bedew your cheeks with streaming tears? But light is our sorrow, if it lies not too deep for tears. For you Ilium but now has fallen, for me it fell long ago, when the cruel wheels of the swift ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains me still to make supplication to heaven and prolongs my anguish.
Even here the pathos is the calm and reasoned pathos of hopelessness, the pathos of a Stoic who preaches endurance of evils against which his philosophy is not proof. Here, too, we find the Stoic attitude towards death. Death is the end of all; there is naught to dread; death puts an end to hope and fear: to die is to be as though we had never been (394):
post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil. velocis spatii meta novissima; spem ponant avidi, solliciti metum. tempus nos avidum devorat et chaos: mors individua est, noxia corpori nec parcens animae: Taenara et aspero regnum sub domino limen et obsidens custos non facili Cerberus ostio rumores vacui verbaque inania et par sollicito fabula somnio. quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco? quo non nata iacent.
Since naught remains, and death is naughtBut life's last goal, so swiftly sought:Let those who cling to life abateTheir fond desires, and yield to fate;Soon shall grim time and yawning nightIn their vast depths engulf us quite;Impartial death demands the whole—The body slays nor spares the soul.Dark Taenara and Pluto fell,And Cerberus, grim guard of hell—All these but empty rumours seem,The pictures of a troubled dream.Where then will the departed spirit dwell?Let those who never came to being tell.MILLER.
Death brings release from sorrow: the worst of torture is to be forced to live on in the midst of woe—
mors votum meum—cries Hecuba—(1171) infantibus violenta, virginibus venis, ubique properas, saeva: me solam times.
O death, my sole desire, for boys and maidsThou com'st with hurried step and savage mien:But me alone of mortals dost thou fear.MILLER.
So, too, Andromache, in the passage quoted above, almost apologizes for not having put an end to her existence. Polyxena meets death with exultation (Tro. 945, 1152-9): even the little Astyanax is infected with Stoic passion for suicide (1090):
nec gradu segni puer ad alta pergit moenia. ut summa stetit pro turre, vultus huc et huc acres tulit intrepidus animo…. non flet e turba omnium qui fletur; ac, dum verba fatidici et preces concipit Vlixes vatis et saevos ciet ad sacra superos, sponte desiluit sua in media Priami regna.
And with no lingering pace the boy climbed the lofty battlements, and all about him cast his keen gaze with dauntless soul…. But he alone of all the throng who wept for him wept not at all, and, while Ulysses 'uttered in priestly wise the words of fate and prayed' and called the cruel gods to the sacrifice, the boy of his own will cast himself down to death on the fields that Priam ruled.
The enthusiasm for death is carried too far.[191] Even the agony of theTroadesfails really to stir us: it depresses us without wakening our sympathy. So, too, with other scenes: in theHercules Furenswe have the virtuous Stoic—in the persons of Megara and Amphitryon—confronting theinstans tyrannusin the person of Lycus: it is the hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric,[192] but derives its inspiration from Stoicism (426):
Lyc. cogere.Meg. cogi qui potest nescit mori.Lyc. effare potius, quod novis thalamis parem regale munus.Meg. aut tuam mortem aut meam.Lyc. moriere demens.Meg. coniugi occurram meo.Lyc. sceptrone nostro famulus est potior tibi?Meg. quot iste famulus tradidit reges neci.Lyc. cur ergo regi servit et patitur iugum?Meg. imperia dura tolle: quid virtus erit?[193]Lyc. obici feris monstrisque virtutem putas?Meg. virtutis est domare quae cuncti pavent.Lyc. tenebrae loquentem magna Tartareae premunt.Meg. non est ad astra mollis e terris via.[194]Lyc. Thou shalt be forced.Meg. He can be forced, who knows not how to die.Lyc. Tell me what gift I could bestow more rich Than royal wedlock?Meg. Or thy death or mine.Lyc. Then die, thou fool.Meg. 'Tis thus I'll meet my lord.Lyc. Is that slave more to thee than I, a king?Meg. How many kings has that slave given to death!Lyc. Why does he serve a king and bear the yoke?Meg. Remove hard tasks, and where would valour be?Lyc. To conquer monsters call'st thou valour then?Meg. 'Tis valour to subdue what all men fear.Lyc. The shades of Hades hold that boaster fast.Meg. No easy way leads from the earth to heaven. MILLER
So, too, a little later (463) Amphitryon crushes Lycus with a trueStoic retort:—
Lyc. quemcumque miserum videris, hominem scias.Amph. quemcumque fortem videris, miserum neges.[195]
Lyc. Whoe'er is wretched, him mayst thou know for mortal.Amph. Whoe'er is brave, thou mayst not call him wretched.
Admirable as are the sentiments expressed by these virtuous and calamitous persons, they leave us cold: they are too self-sufficient to need our sympathy. Pain and death have no terrors for them; why should we pity them? But it would be unjust to lay the blame for this absence of pathetic power entirely on the influence of Stoicism. The scholastic rhetoric is not a good vehicle for pathos, and must bear a large portion of the blame, though even the rhetoric is due in no small degree to the Stoic type of dialectic. As Seneca himself says, speaking of others than himself, 'Philosophia quae fuit, facta philologia est.'[196] And it must further be remembered that of the few flights of real poetry in these plays some of the finest were inspired by Stoicism. The drama cannot nourish in the Stoic atmosphere, poetry can. Seneca was sometimes a poet. His best-known chorus, the famousregem non faciunt opesof theThyestes(345), is directly inspired by Stoicism. The speeches of Agamemnon and Andromache, together with the chorus already quoted from theTroades, all bear the impress of the Stoic philosophy. The same is true of the scarcely inferior chorus on fate from theOedipus(980).
But there are other passages of genuine poetry where the Stoic is silent. The chorus in theHercules Furens(838), giving the conventional view of death, will stand comparison with the chorus of theTroades, giving the philosophic view. The chorus on the dawn (H.F.125) brings the fresh sounds and breezes of early morning into the atmosphere of the rhetorician's lecture-room. The celebrated
venient annis saecula seris quibus Oceanus vincula rerum laxet et ingens pateat tellus Tethysque novos detegat orbes nec sit terris ultima Thule (Med.375)
Late in time shall come an age, when Ocean shall unbar the world, and the whole wide earth be revealed, and Tethys shall show forth a new world, nor Thule be earth's limit any more.
has acquired a fictitious importance since the discovery of the new world, but shows a fine imagination, even if—as has been maintained—it is merely a courtly reference to the British expedition of Claudius. And the invocation to sleep in theHercules Furensproved worthy to provide an inspiration for Shakespeare[197] (1063):
solvite tantis animum monstris solvite superi, caecam in melius flectite mentem. tuque, o domitor Somne malorum, requies animi, pars humanae melior vitae, volucre o matris genus Astracae, frater durae languide Mortis, veris miscens falsa, futuri certus et idem pessimus auctor, pax errorum, portus vitae, lucis requies noctisque comes, qui par regi famuloque venis, pavidum leti genus humanum cogis longam discere noctem: placidus fessum lenisque fove, preme devinctum torpore gravi.
Save him, ye gods, from monstrous madness, save him, restore his darkened mind to sanity. And thou, O sleep, subduer of ill, the spirit's repose, thou better part of human life, swift-winged child of Astraca, drowsy brother of cruel death, mixing false with true, prescient of what shall be, yet oftener prescient of sorrow, peace mid our wanderings, haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion, that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste of the long night of death; do thou bring gentle rest to his weariness, and sweet balm to his anguish, and overwhelm him with heavy stupor.
But the poetry is confined mainly to the lyrics. In them, though the metre be monotonous and the thought rarely more than commonplace, the feeling rings true, the expression is brilliant, and the never absent rhetoric is sometimes transmuted to a more precious substance with a far-off resemblance to true lyrical passion. In the iambics, with the exception of the passages already quoted from theTroadesand thePhaedra, touches of genuine poetry are most rare.[198] In certain of the long descriptive passages (H.F.658 sqq.,Oed.530 sqq.) we get a stagey picturesqueness, but no more. It is for different qualities that we read the iambics of Seneca, if we read them at all.
Even in its worst moments the rhetoric is capable of extorting our unwilling admiration by its sheer cleverness and audacity. A good example is to be found in the passage of theThyestes, where Atreus meditates whether he shall call upon his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon to aid him in his unnatural vengeance on Thyestes. He has doubts as to whether he is their father, for Thyestes had seduced their mother Aerope (327):—
prolis incertae fides ex hoc petatur scelere: si bella abnuunt et gerere nolunt odia, si patruum vocant, pater est. eatur.
And by this test of crime,Let their uncertain birth be put to proof:If they refuse to wage this war of deathAnd will not serve my hatred; if they pleadHe is their uncle—then he is their sire.So to my work!MILLER'S translation slightly altered.
Equally ingenious is the closing scene between Atreus and Thyestes after the vengeance is accomplished and Thyestes has feasted on the flesh of his own sons (1100):
Thy. quid liberi meruere?Atr. quod fuerant tui.Thy. natos parenti—Atr. fateor et, quod me iuvat, certos.Thy. piorum praesides testor deos.Atr. quin coniugales?Thy. scelere quid pensas scelus?Atr. scio quid queraris: scelere praerepto doles,nec quod nefandas hauseris angit dapes;quod non pararis: fuerat hic animus tibiinstruere similes inscio fratri ciboset adiuvante liberos matre aggredisimilique leto sternere—hoc unum obstitit:tuosputasti.Thy. What was my children's sin?Atr. This, that they were thy children.Thy. But to thinkThat children to the father—Atr. That indeed,I do confess it, gives me greatest joy,That thou art well assured they were thy sons.Thy. I call upon the gods of innocence—Atr. Why not upon the gods of marriage call?Thy. Why dost thou seek to punish crime with crime?Atr. Well do I know the cause of thy complaint:Because I have forestalled thee in the deed.Thou grievest, not because thou hast consumedThis horrid feast, but that thou wast not firstTo set it forth. This was thy fell intent,To arrange a feast like this unknown to me,And with their mother's aid attack my sons,And with a like destruction lay them low.But this one thing opposed—thou thought'st them thine.MILLER.
These passages are as unreal as they are repulsive, but they are diabolically clever. Seneca's rhetoric is, however, as we have already seen, capable of rising to higher things, and even where he does not succeed, as in the passages quoted above from thePhaedraandTroades,[199] in introducing a genuine poetic element, he often produces striking declamatory effects. The exit of the blind Oedipus, as he goes forth into life-long banishment, bringing peace to Thebes at the last, is highly artificial in form, but, given the rhetorical drama, is not easily surpassed as a conclusion—
mortifera mecum vitia terrarum extraho. violenta Fata et horridus Morbi tremor, Maciesque et atra Pestis et rabidus Dolor, mecum ite, mecum. ducibus his uti libet (1058).
With me to exile lead I forth 'all pestilential humours of the land. Ye blasting fates', ye trembling agues, famine and deadly plague and maddened grief, go forth with me, with me! My heart rejoices to follow in your train.
So likewise the last despairing cry of Jason, as Medea sails victoriously away in her magic car—
per alta vade spatia sublimi aethere,testare nullos esse qua veheris deos
Sail on through the airy depths of highest heaven, andbear witness that, where thou soarest, no gods can be.
forms a magnificent ending to a play which, for all its unreality, succeeds for more than half its length (l 578) in arresting our attention by its ingenious rhetoric and its comparative freedom from mere bombast. Excellent, too, is the speech (Phoen. 193) in which Antigone dissuades her father from suicide. 'What ills can time have in store for him compared to those he has endured?'—
qui fata proculcavit ac vitae bona proiecit atque abscidit et casus suos oneravit ipse, cui deo nullo est opus, quare ille mortem cupiat aut quare petat? utrumque timidi est: nemo contempsit mori qui concupivit. cuius haut ultra mala exire possunt, in loco tuto est situs, quis iam deorum, velle fac, quicquam potest malis tuis adicere? iam nec tu potes nisi hoc, ut esse te putes dignum nece— non es nec ulla pectus hoc culpa attigit. et hoc magis te, genitor, insontem voca, quod innocens es dis quoque invitis…. … … quidquid potest auferre cuiquam mors, tibi hoc vita abstulit.
Who tramples under foot his destiny,Who disregards and scorns the goods of life,And aggravates the evils of his lot,Who has no further need of Providence:Wherefore should such a man desire to die,Or seek for death? Each is the coward's act.No one holds death in scorn who seeks to die.The man whose evils can no further goIs safely lodged. Who of the gods, think'st thou,Grant that he wills it so, can add one jotUnto thy sum of trouble? Nor canst thou,Save that thou deem'st thyself unfit to live.But thou art not unfit, for in thy breastNo taint of sin has come. And all the more,My father, art thou free from taint of sin,Because, though heaven willed it otherwise,Thou still art innocent….Whatever deathFrom any man can take, thy life hath taken.MILLER
It is, however, in isolated lines and strikingsententiaethat Seneca's gift for rhetorical epigram is seen at its best. Nothing could be better turned than
quaeris Alcidae parem? nemo est nisi ipse: (H.F. 84).[A] curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent (Phaedra607).[B] fortem facit vicina libertas senem (Phaedra139).[C] qui genus iactat suum, aliena laudat (H.F. 340). fortuna fortes metuit, ignavos premit (Med. 159). fortuna opes auferre, non animum potest (Med. 176). maius est monstro nefas:[D] nam monstra fato, moribus scelera imputes (Phaedra143).
[A] Cp. Theobald: None but himself can be his parallel.
[B] Cp. Sir W. Raleigh: Passions are best compared with floods and streams, The shallow murmur but the deep are dumb.
[C] For dawning freedom makes the aged brave. MILLER.
[D] For thy impious love is worseThan her unnatural and impious love.The first you would impute to character,The last to fate.MILLER.
If nothing had survived of Seneca's plays but a collection ofsententiae, we might have regretted his loss almost as we regret the loss of Menander.
Here his merits, such as they are, end: they fail to justify us in placing him high as a dramatist; and he has many faults over and above those incidental to his style and modes of thought. While freer than most of his contemporaries from the vain display of obscure erudition, he falls into the common vice of introducing 'catalogues'. They are dull in epic: in drama they are worse than dull. TheHercules Furensis no place for a matter-of-fact catalogue of the hero's labours, set forth (210-248) in monotonous iambics from the mouth of Amphitryon. If they are to be described at all, they demand the decorative treatment of lyric verse,[200] nor is a catalogue of the herbs used by Medea to poison the robe destined for her rival any more excusable.[201] Again, like his contemporaries, he shows a lack of taste and humour which in its worst manifestations passes belief. Not a few of the passages already quoted serve to illustrate the point. But for fatuity it would be hard to surpass the words with which Amphitryon interrupts Theseus' account of the horrors of the underworld:
estne aliqua tellus Cereris aut Bacchi ferax? (H.F.697.)
Scarcely less absurd is the chorus in thePhaedra, who, when hymning the power of love, give a long list of animals subject to such passion: the catalogue culminates with the statement that even whales and elephants fall in love (351):
amat insani belua ponti Lucaeque boves.
But all such instances pale before the conclusion of thePhaedra. Not content with giving a ghastly and exaggerated account of the death of Hippolytus, Seneca must needs bring the fragments of his mutilated body upon the scene. Theseus, at the suggestion of the chorus, attempts to put them together again. The climax comes when, finding an unidentifiable portion, he cries (1267):
quae pars tui sit dubito, sed pars est tui!
The actual language of the plays is pure and classical. There is no trace of provincialism, nothing to suggest that Seneca was a Spaniard. Its vices proceed from the false mould in which it has been cast. There is a lack of connecting particles, and we proceed by a series of short rhetorical jerks.[202] It is the style that Seneca himself condemns in his letters (114. 1). Its faults are further aggravated by the metre: taken line by line, the iambics of Seneca are impressive: taken collectively they are monotonous in the extreme. The ear suffers a continual series of stabs, which are not the less unpleasant because none of them go deep. The verse seems formed, one might almost say punched out, by a relentless machine. It is never modified by circumstances; it is the same in narrative and dialogue, the same in passion and in calm, if indeed Seneca can ever be said to be either passionate or calm. Its pauses come with monotonous regularity at the end of the line, diversified only by an occasional break at the caesura in the third foot. Nor does the rule[203] observed by Seneca, that only a spondee or anapaest is permitted in the fifth foot, tend to relieve the monotony, though it does much to give the individual lines such weight as they possess. A more complete contrast with the iambics of the early Latin Tragedies cannot be imagined. What has been gained in polish has been lost in dignity. Whence the Senecan iambic is derived, is a question which cannot be answered with certainty. It is wholly unlike the early Roman tragic iambic. Elision is rare, and there is little variety. Instead of the massive and rugged measure of Pacuvius or Accius, we have a finished and elegant monotony. In all likelihood it is the lineal descendant of the iambic of Ovid.[204] In view of Seneca's great admiration for Ovid—he quotes him continually in his prose works—of Ovid's mastery of rhetoric and epigram, and yet more of the distinct parallels traceable between thePhaedraandMedeaof Seneca and the correspondingHeroidesof Ovid, it becomes a strong probability that the Senecan iambic was deeply influenced—if not actually created—by the iambic style of the earlier poet's lost drama, the famousMedea.[205]
As to the models to which he is indebted for his treatment of choric metres we know nothing. In spite of the fact that he employs a large variety of metres, and that his choruses at times stray from rhetoric into poetry of a high order, there is in them a still more deadly monotony than in his iambics. The chorus are devoid of life; they are there partly as a concession to convention, but mainly to supply incidental music. Their inherent dullness is not relieved by the metre. Of strophic arrangement there is no clear trace; in a large proportion of cases the choruses are written in one fixed and rigid metre admitting of no variety: even where different metres alternate, the relaxation is but small, for the same monotony reigns unchecked within the limits of each section. The strange experiments in mixed metres in theAgamemnonandOedipusshow Seneca's technique at its worst: they are composed of fragments of Horatian metres, thinly disguised by inversions and resolutions of feet: they lack all governing principle and are an unqualified failure. Of the remaining metres the Anapaestic, Asclepiad, Sapphic, and Glyconic predominate. He is, perhaps, least unsuccessful in his treatment of the Anapaest: the lines do not lack melody, and the natural flexibility of the metre saves them from extreme monotony, though they would have been more successful had he employed the paroemiac line as a solemn and resonant close to the march of the dimeter. But one wearies soon of the eternal Asclepiads and Glyconics which he often allows to continue in unbroken and unvaried series for seventy or eighty lines together. He rarely allows any variation within the Glyconic and never makes use of it to break the monotony of the Asclepiad. Still worse are his Sapphics. Abandoning the usual arrangement in stanzas of three lesser Sapphics followed by an Adonic verse, his Sapphic choruses consist almost entirely of the lesser Sapphic varied by a very occasional Adonic. The continual succession of these lines without so much as an occasional change of caesura to diversify the rhythm is at times almost intolerable. At the close of such choruses we feel as though we had jogged at a rapid trot for long miles on a very hard and featureless road.
Language and metre work hand in hand with rhetoric to make these strange plays dramatically ineffective. So strange are they and in many ways so unlike anything else in Classical literature, that the question as to the purpose with which they were written and the place they occupied in the literature of their day affords an interesting subject for speculation. Were they written for the stage? Decayed as was the taste for tragedy, tragedies may occasionally have been acted.[206] But there are considerations which suggest doubt as to whether the plays of Seneca were written with any such purpose. Even under Nero it is scarcely credible that the introduction of the mangled fragments of Hippolytus upon the stage would be possible or palatable.[207] Medea kills her childrencoram populo, and, not content with killing them, flings their bodies at Jason from her magic chariot high in air. Hercules kills his children in full view of the audience, not within the house as in the corresponding drama of Euripides. Such scenes suggest that the plays were written not for the stage but for recitation with musical interludes from a trained choir. Indications that this was the case are to be found in theHercules Furens. While the hero is engaged in slaying his children, Amphitryon, in a succession of short speeches, gives the details of the murder. This would be ridiculous and unnecessary were the scene actually presented on the stage, whereas they become absolutely necessary on the assumption that the play was written for recitation.[208] This assumption has the further merit of being charitable; skilful recitation would cover many defects that would be almost intolerable on the stage.